International Business Machines Corporation, doing business as IBM (nicknamed Big Blue),[6] is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries.[7][8] It is a publicly traded company and one of the 30 companies in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.[9][10] IBM is the largest industrial research organization in the world, with 19 research facilities across a dozen countries; for 29 consecutive years, from 1993 to 2021, it held the record for most annual U.S. patents generated by a business.
IBM was founded in 1911 as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR), a holding company of manufacturers of record-keeping and measuring systems. It was renamed "International Business Machines" in 1924 and soon became the leading manufacturer of punch-card tabulating systems. During the 1960s and 1970s, the IBM mainframe, exemplified by the System/360 and its successors, was the world's dominant computing platform, with the company producing 80 percent of computers in the U.S. and 70 percent of computers worldwide.[11] Embracing both business and scientific computing, System/360 was the first family of computers designed to cover a complete range of applications from small to large.[12]
IBM debuted in the microcomputer market in 1981 with the IBM Personal Computer; its architecture remains the basis for the majority of personal computers sold today.[13] The company later also found success in the portable space with the ThinkPad. Since the 1990s, IBM has concentrated on computer services, software, supercomputers, and scientific research; it sold its microcomputer division to Lenovo in 2005. IBM continues to develop mainframes, and its supercomputers have consistently ranked among the most powerful in the world in the 21st century.
As one of the world's oldest and largest technology companies, IBM has been responsible for several technological innovations, including the Automated Teller Machine (ATM), Dynamic Random-Access Memory (DRAM), the floppy disk, Generalized Markup Language, the hard disk drive, the magnetic stripe card, the relational database, the SQL programming language, and the Universal Product Code (UPC) barcode. The company has made inroads in advanced computer chips, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, and data infrastructure.[14][15][16] IBM employees and alumni have won various recognitions for their scientific research and inventions, including six Nobel Prizes and six Turing Awards.[17]
History
1910s–1950s
IBM originated with several technological innovations developed and commercialized in the late 19th century. Julius E. Pitrap patented the computing scale in 1885;[18] Alexander Dey invented the dial recorder (1888);[19] Herman Hollerith patented the Electric Tabulating Machine (1889);[20] and Willard Bundy invented a time clock to record workers' arrival and departure times on a paper tape (1889).[21] On June 16, 1911, their four companies were amalgamated in New York State by Charles Ranlett Flint forming a fifth company, the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR) based in Endicott, New York.
Corporate affairs
Business trends
IBM's market capitalization was valued at over $153 billion as of May 2024.[130] Despite its relative decline within the technology sector,[131] IBM remains the seventh largest technology company by revenue, and 68th largest overall company by revenue in the United States. IBM ranked No. 38 on the 2020 Fortune 500 rankings of the largest United States corporations by total revenue.[132] In 2014, IBM was accused of using "financial engineering" to hit its quarterly earnings targets rather than investing for the longer term.[133][134]
Products
IBM has a large and diverse portfolio of products and services. As of 2016, these offerings fall into the categories of cloud computing, artificial intelligence, commerce, data and analytics, Internet of things (IoT),[156] IT infrastructure, mobile, digital workplace[157] and cybersecurity.[158]
Hardware
Mainframe computers
Since 1954, IBM has sold mainframe computers, the latest being the IBM z series. The most recent model, the
Research
Research has been part of IBM since its founding, and its organized efforts trace their roots back to 1945, when the Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory was founded at Columbia University in New York City, converting a renovated fraternity house on Manhattan's West Side into IBM's first laboratory. Now, IBM Research constitutes the largest industrial research organization in the world, with 12 labs on 6 continents.[186] IBM Research is headquartered at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center in New York, and facilities include the Almaden lab in California, Austin lab in Texas, Australia lab in Melbourne, Brazil lab in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, China lab in Beijing and Shanghai, Ireland lab in Dublin, Haifa lab in Israel, India lab in Delhi and Bangalore, Tokyo lab, Zurich lab and Africa lab in Nairobi.
In terms of investment, IBM's R&D expenditure totals several billion dollars each year. In 2012, that expenditure was approximately $6.9 billion.[187] Recent allocations have included $1 billion to create a business unit for Watson in 2014, and $3 billion to create a next-gen semiconductor along with $4 billion towards growing the company's "strategic imperatives" (cloud, analytics, mobile, security, social) in 2015.
Brand and reputation
IBM is nicknamed Big Blue partly because of its blue logo and color scheme,[201][202] and also in reference to its former de facto dress code of white shirts with blue suits.[201][203] The company logo has undergone several changes over the years, with its current "8-bar" logo designed in 1972 by graphic designer Paul Rand.[204] It was a general replacement for a 13-bar logo, since period photocopiers did not render narrow (as opposed to tall) stripes well. Aside from the logo, IBM used Helvetica as a corporate typeface for 50 years, until it was replaced in 2017 by the custom-designed IBM Plex.
IBM has a valuable brand as a result of over 100 years of operations and marketing campaigns.
People and culture
Employees
IBM is among the world's largest employers, with over 297,900 employees worldwide in 2022,[211] with about 160,000 of those being tech consultants.[185]
IBM's leadership programs include Extreme Blue, an internship program, and the IBM Fellow award, offered since 1963 based on technical achievement.[212]
Notable current and former employees
Many IBM employees have achieved notability outside of work and after leaving IBM.
Leadership
President
- 1) Thomas J. Watson, 1911–1949
- 2) John George Phillips, 1949–1951
- 3) Thomas J. Watson Jr., 1951–1961
- 4) Albert Lynn Williams, 1961–1966
- 5) T. Vincent Learson, 1966–1971
- 6) Frank T. Cary, 1971–1974
- 7) John R. Opel, 1974–1983
- 8) John Fellows Akers, 1983–1989
- 9) Jack Kuehler, 1989–2000
- 10) Samuel J. Palmisano, 2000–2012
- 11) Ginni Rometty
See also
- List of electronics brands
- List of largest Internet companies
- List of largest manufacturing companies by revenue
- Tech companies in the New York City metropolitan region
- Top 100 US Federal Contractors
- Quantum Energy Teleportation using IBM superconducting computers
Further reading
- .
External links
References
- IBM Is Blowing Up Its Annual Performance Review Fortune, February 1, 2016, retrieved July 22, 2016^
- IBM – Arvind Krishna – Chief Executive Officer www.ibm.com, retrieved March 8, 2022^
- IBM Newsroom - Gary Cohn IBM Newsroom, retrieved March 8, 2022^